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Blackacre
Blackacre: Poems | Monica Youn
11 posts | 5 read | 11 to read
The brilliant new collection by Monica Youn following Ignatz, a finalist for the National Book Award the trees all planted in the same month after the same fire each thick around as a man’s wrist meticulously spaced grids cutting the sunshine into panels into planks and crossbeams of light an incandescent architecture that is the home that was promised you --from "Whiteacre" “Blackacre” is a centuries-old legal fiction—a placeholder name for a hypothetical estate. Treacherously lush or alluringly bleak, these poems reframe their subjects as landscape, as legacy—a bereavement, an intimacy, a racial identity, a pubescence, a culpability, a diagnosis. With a surveyor’s keenest tools, Youn marks the boundaries of the given, what we have been allotted: acreage that has been ruthlessly fenced, previously tenanted, ploughed and harvested, enriched and depleted. In the title sequence, the poet gleans a second crop from the field of Milton’s great sonnet on his blindness: a lyric meditation on her barrenness, on her own desire—her own struggle—to conceive a child. What happens when the transformative imagination comes up against the limits of unalterable fact?
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quote
UrsulaMonarch
Blackacre: Poems | Monica Youn
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I love when a book makes me look up a word!
A palinode or palinody is an ode in which the writer retracts a view or sentiment expressed in an earlier poem.

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Yossarian
Blackacre: Poems | Monica Youn
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Every good poem should begin with a quote from snopes.com

TobeyTheScavengerMonk This poem legitimately made my life better. 8y
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Kenny
Blackacre: Poems | Monica Youn
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I asked the smartest people I know for 2016 poetry recommendations and here are some of their favorites. My friends have good taste.

Not included on this list—books that were already my favorites. See: Tyehimba Jess, Solmaz Sharif, Mary Ruefle, Vi Khi Nao, Don Mee Choi, Renee Gladman.

CarolynOliver Ocean Vuong's book was great too! 8y
TRANSOM Spellcheck seems to vehemently disagree. 8y
GoldenGirl I'm a fan of good ol' E.E. Cummings. 8y
42 likes3 comments
review
CarolynOliver
Blackacre: Poems | Monica Youn
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Pickpick

Monica Youn‘s Blackacre* practically shimmers with intelligence as it ranges over subjects including desire, territory (physical, emotional, imaginative), race, and fertility. Here intellect meets imagery with an intensity so great it took my breath away.

Full review here: https://rosemaryandreadingglasses.com/2016/10/13/recommended-reading-monica-youn...

#poetry #diversebooks #wndb #litsyfeature
*review copy from @Graywolfpress

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CarolynOliver
Blackacre: Poems | Monica Youn
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I'm writing up my review of this book, and keep getting distracted as I leaf through. It's gorgeous. This is just one part of the poem "Greenacre."

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klwestenberg
Blackacre: Poems | Monica Youn
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"Necessity
is not a weaver,
there is no spindle

in her hand;
it is a woman
wearing a steel

collar, wearing
a stiffly pleated
dress, which lifts

to reveal nothing
but fabric where
her body used to be."

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CarolynOliver
Blackacre: Poems | Monica Youn
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Wishing for more light on this drive so I could keep reading this brilliant book.

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CarolynOliver
Blackacre: Poems | Monica Youn

Wishing for more light on this drive so I could keep reading this brilliant book.

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CarolynOliver
Blackacre: Poems | Monica Youn
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Waiting for parent info night to start ...

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review
stephopitz
Blackacre: Poems | Monica Youn
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Pickpick

Wonderful collection using legalese when artfully discussing the very personal.

Defined: "Blackacre, Whiteacre, Greenacre, Brownacre, and variations are the placeholder names used for fictitious estates in land.

The names are used by professors of law in common law jurisdictions, particularly in the area of real property and occasionally in contracts, to discuss the rights of various parties to a piece of land."

UrsulaMonarch I had no idea! So interesting. I just started this collection and really like it so far. 7y
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